So 'Ana' moving in wasn't disrupting at all. She tries to stay over with other friends when possible, and has spent the last couple of days with her mom out of state, so she's only slept over a few times.

It's pretty cool, conversing deep into the AM, her being a night owl and all. Everything from the writers of Roseanne going out of there way to make them all sound like idiots, to narrated imaginary trips through higher dimensions.

So, all in all, it's been fun.

Now, onto my latest experiment- hacking my circadian rythms.

I've been trying to find ways to maximize my awake time, while still remaining alert. Eight hours a night, over the course of fifty years, means about seventeen years of it are spent sleeping!

Unacceptable.

The past few months, I've been experimenting with different sleep cycles, none of which really fit my schedule. So I was thinking- if there's not enough hours in the day, why not just increase the length of a day?

Hence the 48 hour day was born. (Which is just a fancy way of saying that I go to sleep every other night.)

Of course, I added a couple of 90 minute naps inbetween.

So, for the past few weeks, I've been using myself as a guinea pig, subjecting myself to the following schedule:

12am-430am
Sleep

430am-430pm
Awake

430pm-6pm
Nap

6pm-430am
Awake

430am-6am
Nap

6am-12am
Awake

Repeat

Which, if you want to think about it in 24 hour terms (how archaic), roughly averages out to about 3.75 hours a 'day'. In 48 hour terms, that's a healthy 7.5 hours of sleep a day.

And I've felt pretty good. Since I'm not augmenting the schedule with any alertness-inducing chemicals, I figure my body will tell me if it rejects the new rythm, which hasn't seemed to happen yet. Work is going fine, my memory seems to be well within the normal-for-me range (somewhat absentminded), and my coordination and reflexes are AOK.

As long as I keep the sleeping and nap times in multiples of 90 minutes (average length of time for sleep cycles) I awaken feeling refreshed.

With this schedule, if it were to theoretically be maintained for the above mentioned five decades, would result in only eight years spent in slumber. Not ideal, but that's still gaining nine years that would have otherwise been wasted.

And what will I do with that extra time? Post blog entries at 4am, apparently. Let's see, I just got in from Denny's after a late night snack, and I caught the grave shift clerk sleeping at the wheel. Before that, I was catching up on the downloaded movies and tv shows that have been piling up on my hard drive.

Haven't been doing as much work at the ole' workbench as I'd thought I would, but I'm still waiting on some backordered parts to arrive. My main work in cryobiology will have to wait untill than, but I've been distracting myself with rudimentary demonstrations of electrogravity.

Fun fun fun.

(Jeez I'm weird- I'm going to be alone forever.)